near the case of Mr. and Mrs. Brissenden that it
positively excited me, and all the more for her sustained
unconsciousness. "Oh, the man's not aware of his own change. He doesn't
see it as we do. It's all to his advantage."

"But _we_ see it to his advantage. How should that prevent?"

"We see it to the advantage of his mind and his talk, but not to that
of----"

"Well, what?" I pressed as she pulled up.

She was thinking how to name such mysteries. "His delicacy. His
consideration. His thought _for_ her. He would think for her if he
weren't selfish. But he _is_ selfish--too much so to spare her, to be
generous, to realise. It's only, after all," she sagely went on, feeding
me again, as I winced to feel, with profundity of my own sort, "it's
only an excessive case, a case that in him happens to show as what the
doctors call 'fine,' of what goes on whenever two persons are so much
mixed up. One of them always gets more out of it than the other. One of
them--you know the saying--gives the lips, the other gives the cheek."

"It's the deepest of all truths. Yet the cheek profits too," I more
prudently argued.

"It profits most. It takes and keeps and uses all the lips give. The
cheek, accordingly," she continued to point out, "is Mr. Long's. The
lips are what we began by looking for. We've found them. They're
drained--they're dry, the lips. Mr. Long finds his improvement natural
and beautiful. He revels in it. He takes it for granted. He's sublime."

It kept me for a minute staring at her. "So--do you know?--are _you_!"

She received this wholly as a tribute to her acuteness, and was
therefore proportionately gracious. "That's only because it's catching.
You've _made_ me sublime. You found me dense. You've affected me quite
as Mrs. Server has affected Mr. Long. I don't pretend I show it," she
added, "quite as much as he does."

"Because that would entail _my_ showing it as much as, by your
contention, _she_ does? Well, I confess," I declared, "I do feel
remarkably like that pair of lips. I feel drained--I feel dry!" Her
answer to this, with another toss of her head, was extravagant enough to
mean forgiveness--was that I was impertinent, and her action in support
of her charge was to move away from me, taking her course again to the
terrace, easily accessible from the room in which we had been talking.
She passed out of the window that opened to the ground, and I watched
her while, in the brighter light, she put up